News from July 1st to September 30th, 2005. Newer news. Older news.
Tuesday, September 27th by mwh
Even less commentary - 12:15 PM
We would so like to write stuff about these, but, well, we didn't. Sorry.
We have 30 demos for you today. Let's start with the ant demos:
It may not be one of his most treasured records ("plz improve this crap!") but it's a Joe record and it's an ID record so we just have to salute Arturo Garcia Lasca and his Easy 100% marathon of the Dimension of the Doomed in 7:32, a ten second improvement. It's so good, we've even decided to let him back into #qdq.
Now, you'd have thought that Thomas Stubgaard's recent mauling of the The Elder World Nightmare 100% would stand for some time. But that'd be reckoning without Marlo Galinski who took 21 seconds off the Dane's time to get 21:27. Do you think Marlo's going to take the mighty All of ID1 NH back? I'm not going to bet against it (though if you're insane, you could take advantage of the fact that Marlo takes a less risky route in e4m4 than Thomas...).
Wednesday, September 21st by mwh
Running late... - 11:55 AM
Here at SDA, we like to make updates witty, interesting and usually fabulously rude. But sometimes there just isn't the manpower, and we have so many demos that a lack of wit is a poor reason to keep them from you... I haven't had time to describe all these demos, so you'll just have to watch them. Sucks to be you, eh?
There's still time for a little rudeness, though. Ask yourself a question: what are the skill settings we accept demos on on SDA? I hope your answers are "Easy and Nightmare". Do you see Normal on that list? No, you don't. Despite that, we received TWO demos this last week that were recorded on the verboten Normal skill. We're not really into the name and shame business at SDA so we're not going to name the guilty parties. It's a total coincidence that the first demos in this update are a pair of collaborations between Kimmo Polvivaara and Basil de Vries. They did the 2-Player Easy and Nightmare 100%s of sm64_zwiffle in 0:30 and 0:31, respectively.
Right, moving on swiftly. All the holes in the tables left by the helltunnel/warecrap/sm64_noarmor/100p_cthons map additions got filled in the last update but demos continued to come in:
We also have demos on more vintage maps:
In the Episode 3 marathon they actually beat the existing record for Termination Central by five seconds so they spent the little while necessary to make a ten second improvement to 0:55.
On a final note, I'd like to comment on the astonishing number of new players we've seen at SDA this year. This update alone contains demos by FOUR previously unseen players. And as new blood is one of the things that keeps us going, I'd like to thank:
Sunday, September 18th by lodis
LotW!!11one - 8:07 PM
Now that we have gotten that sorry business out of the way I'd like to present a new feature here on SDA. It's.....
LotW
So what does LotW stand for? L for "Level", o for "of", t for "the" and W for "Week" = "Level of the Week"? That would make three correct guesses and one wrong.
I'm far too lazy to add one level every week. So what does the W stand for then? Well it's like this: W stands for Whatever/Whenever/Wherever (we're not talking about
Morfans philosophy about sex partners, though he uses this exact phrase). It means I'll add a level regularly and I'll try to keep it in the spirit of it having a connection to W.
For example, if Stubby made a level it'd be "Level of the Wanker" and if Basil made a level it'd be "Level of the Weedhead". You get the idea.
So what does the W stand for today? Wind! Mwh figured that if we were to replace all the Id levels with newer levels (starting with using e1m1rmx to replace e1m1) then surely this map would replace e3m5, "the Wind Tunnels" - hence Level of the Wind.
What map I hear you say? This map: Antediluvian by John Fitzgibbons. Name your demos ant_xxx.
I hope you will like this new feature, if you have any objections, thoughts or just plain flattery, email me or find me in our channel on irc.
Tuesday, September 13th by Morfans
It's A Large One! - 11:05 PM
Phew. It's been a busy week here at Speedrunning Central. Our Inbox has taken a right hammering in the last few days. The deity of your choice bless you, everyone.
We shall start with the Fleckyest runner in SDA history: Justin Fleck. He took a wander around mexx9a and recaptured his Easy 100% record from Thomas Bergendorff with a 2:18, 5 seconds faster. Still a few seconds to be had here so maybe we'll see a fight back from the Bergmeister.
Arturo Garcia Lasca has had a good week's running, turning in three demos and he sent in a new profile and picture. So those that are curious can see just how ugly the twat is. Then watch these...
Next a bunch of demos from a man for whom spelling is merely something that happens to other people, Basil de Vries.
It has a bridge and the wind tunnel bug is as annoying as hell. It can only be hellbrid.
And a sm64_zwiffle Nightmare 100% tablefiller in 0:52 by Basil de Vries. Or this one.
Why choose between a Fleck and a Wag when you can have both? Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner have graced us wth 3 coops.
And finally, I noticed that the last two updates I wrote have provoked comments from cuddly Canadian muffin Jube on the PlanetQuake news page along the lines of "Morfans in no swearing shocker!". Well, I have to say I didn't realise my language was usually that colourful. But, just for her, next time i can promise you a tirade of utter filth. Regular readers under the age of 18 should NOT attend...
Thursday, September 8th by Morfans
Evan 'Elp Us, We've Been Flecked! - 1:30 PM
Time once again for us all to dance the SDA Fandango. Sometimes called the Quake Quickstep or the Rocket Rumba. Probably. Being white and hetrosexual I am, of course, a terrible dancer. The only one I'm any good at is the Mattress Mamba.
Those with a keen eye will have noticed that the Episode 4 - The Elder World section of Justin Fleck's heroic Marathon through the whole of Quake clocked in at 25:11, which just happens to be five seconds faster than Marlo's time. So he ripped the demos out of the .pak, wrote a new .txt and voila! Another Id record! This would normally be a cause for major celebration, but a certain mad Dane has been working on a much risker, and thus faster, run for some time. So within hours of Optic getting the record he lost it again to Thomas Stubgaard and his absolutely mental 21:48. Jeepers!
Lodis would like to issue a public apology for ever thinking that warehaus was a runnable map. He has promised to make amends soon, in some way not yet disclosed, but in the mean time several people have had a crack at the Easy Run...
Most of the the rest of the update features a lot of Fleck, a lot of Wag. You love it! They did the...
Finally, on a less pleasant note, we have had to pull Dmitry's hellbrid Easy Run due to certain irregularities. Which means that Jaakko Alakopsa once again holds the record with his 1:29. Go go Jaakko!
Thursday, September 1st by mwh
We need Mandel back online! - 2:00 PM
It's traditional for the first demo update after a 'new maps' update to be dominated by demos on, well, the new maps. It's also traditional for it to happen less than a week after the maps get and to continue in the tradition breaking, this update isn't dominated by demos on new maps.
In fact we have not ONE, not TWO but
THREE
ID demos for your delictation (the reason for the preposterous size of that "THREE" will become clear in due course).
That said, I'm now going to confuse and annoy by describing the demos we have received on the new maps.
Exploiting their cunning French wit, Pif and Luc de Mestre predicted that msrj would soon be in the tables and recorded a pair of nice 2 player 100%s just after the contest ended; the times for Easy and Nightmare were 0:27 and 0:40 respectively.
The most popular new map was the "OMG it's a knave speedmap!!!1!!", also known as sm100_pulsar:
sm64_zwiffle was also the subject of quite a few demos, but all but one were by the same man...
Back to the new maps for a bit! hellbrid and warehaus were rather less popular than the others, mustering only two demos each.
Time for another ID demo! Time for another ID Easy Run, in fact. Did you know that the second longest ID Easy Run record is Jozsef Szalontai running the Wind Tunnels in just 57 seconds? I hope not, because it's Mathias Thore running the Wind Tunnels in 0:56, making up for the e1m4 frustration with a little use of cl_maxfps.
OK, so we've seen lots of demos on new maps, and the two not so far have beaten rubbish people like Markus and Joe. In fact this Joe character must be really rubbish because Mathias Thore beat another of his demos, this time the Easy Run of mexx8b by 1 second to get 0:18.
Who else isn't very good? Peter Horvath, that's who! Arturo Garcia Lasca beat his Easy Run of pb1 by the standard one second to get 0:33. Ken also improved his Nightmare Run of the same map to the same time, 0:33 being a two second improvement.
That's it, right?
Oh, no, there's another trifling little matter. An ID demo. The biggest ID demo of them all. The only demo that's ever been held at a time of over three hours. The demo everyone expected Stubby to take one day. Well, he hasn't recorded the All of Quake Nightmare 100% -- Justin Fleck has! Beating Marlo by eight minutes and forty seven seconds, he finds every secret and kills every monster in the most difficult skill of the original quake levels in the new record time of 78:01.
Now you know why the big dzip and the 'three' were so big.
[1] In fact, lodis recently exclaimed:
<lolfu> why the hell did I add warehaus? <lolfu> what an annoying piece of crap map
Thursday, August 26th by lodis
Incredible exciting title regarding a certain bodily part of mine - 4:00 PM
Over to the maps:
First off we add the contest map, Manslay's Rocketjumping. Name your demos msrj_xxx. Of course, the contest had demos for all categories, but if you're not up for beating those (the ER, for example, might be a bit hard) you could always coop!
Next we pay homage to a mapper who's done quite a few good maps already, for example Menkalinan. He's russian (as far as I know, his name sounds proper russian), he is...Andrew 'PuLSaR' Sayenko. So how do we pay homage to someone here at TEAM SDA? Well, funnily enough it's pretty close to what I told you what would happen to me if I wouldn't do this update..yes, crucifixion. As we speak Stubby is leading a few select members of the speedrunning community over to PuLSaRs house and they're armed and dangerous. Oh, and we add two of his maps to SDA, but that's not as important.
The first map is The HELLBridge -=Pulsar=-, name your demos hbr_xxx. The second russki map is Evile Configurations, name your demos 100p_xxx.
The next map is a nice base-style map, a bit tight for runs, but fun for 100%s. It's Warehouse, no, not the one that's already here. Name your demos wrh_xxx.
The last map today, and there's been quite a few, is a short one for the optimizers out there! It's T'were Death Poetry, name your demos s64z_xxx. Who will claim the optimized record?
Go run, have fun, send in demos, make me happy. Bye.
Thursday, August 26th by mwh
Short! - 12:30 PM
Tuesday, August 24th by mwh
Abusing the Elderly (and the French) - 7:30 PM
It's always a bit embarrassing when demos marked "optimal" in the tables get beaten. There's a rumour that Thomas Stubgaard's Nightmare 100% of the The Elder God Shrine was marked optimal (probably by Morfans) but this can't have been true as he improved it by 2 seconds to 3:49. As has been explained before on these pages, the odd small mistake here and there doesn't matter so long as the fiend kills are crisp, and crisp they certainly are!
As if nominating beatable demos as unbeatable wasn't bad enough, Morfans is an even bigger loser in this update:
Another answer is "no-one" and Paul Davies and I demonstrated this approach by tackling the Easy 100% of the Deathmatch Classics episode and getting a scrappy but fun 5:12.
The next alternative is to beat yourself. For example, if you're Tom Nguyen you could improve your misery Nightmare 100% by 1 second to get 0:32. Or if you're me and LagDotCom you could improve your new dmc marathon by 22 seconds to get 4:50.
Finally, if you're not going to fill a hole, beat Morfans or indulge in a self-improvement, you might as well beat something French. Moving from east to west, we have:
My final paragraph should contain something about new maps, new contests and normal SDA attitudes to timeliness.
Tuesday, August 16th by Morfans
Marathons and Mad Coops! - 8:09 PM
Oh yes indeed. It does my cruel, shrivelled, black heart good to see that Mad Coops are back in fashion. If you've never taken part in one then FOR SHAME! If you'd like to, just head on over to #qdq and see if anyone feels like a game. Chances are at the moment someone will. Oh, and it always helps if you've given some thought to a map or route that you'd like to try. There's nothing worse than 4 people connecting up and then sitting there going "Right, what shall we do?". "Ummmm. Don't know..."
But before we get to the coops we shall have a bit of a watch of the one man demos, starting with some lovely, lovely marathons.
After making his SDA debut in the recent contest Jonathan Lenhardt has caught the running bug. Which is good news all round as he definitely has some skills worth displying. He took on the tricky terra Nightmare Run, previously unclaimed but now standing at 4:24.
More marathons follow: French Style! Both feature a Nightmare Run through pse.
I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the map elden1. It's not been exactly one of the most active maps in recent years, with Fabian Kollakowski taking TO of the level back in 1999. Connor Fitzgerald decided that the Easy Run could do with bringing into this century and gave some Aussie shine to the grenade jump, saving one second to 0:13.
Our old friend Arturo Garcia Lasca is still improving his old records. Seems like it's one long round of self abuse for young Ken.
Coop wars are rare enough these days. So it's nice to see a bit of good, old fashioned battling over the r1m2 2-Player Easy Run
Next we have a couple more Pif and Luc coops for you...
Two newest-school power-bunny devils improving two old-new school power-bunny demons on critters. Robert Maglic and Mathias Thore improved both of Ilkka Kurkela and Aleksander Osipov's runs by one second to 0:14. That's 0:14 on Easy and 0:14 on Nightmare. And so the world moves on.
Finally, we shall finish off with two of the aforementioned Mad Coops. Kimmo Polvivaara, Paul Davies and Michael Hudson did the terra2 3-Player Easy 100% in 0:47 filling a rather nasty gaping hole (2P time 0:56). Good work, Anglo-Finnish death squad.
But that's no where near mad enough. More players!! Mathias Thore, Paul Davies, Robert Maglic, Thomas Stubgaard and Michael Hudson did a 5-Player Easy 100% of the Ebon Fortress in 0:49 (3P time 0:54). Way to go, ummm, Dangle-wedes!
Monday, August 8th by mwh
Oh Yes! It's The Demos! - 9:08 PM
We start with some mistakes. In early July, Mandel claimed a couple of records, one with Midas, and duly sent the demos in to the list where they were promptly forgotten. So, in lovingly handcrafted fashion, I am happy to report the following:
On the theme of mistakes, we notice that it's over a year since the last demo from Justin Fleck, and not speedrunning for a year is surely the worst kind of mistake. Luckily for both him and us, he's back! Craftily choosing his oldest standing records as targets, Optic cranked out:
What comes after 1 player demos? Two player demos, of course! Ten of them, in fact.
We start with the mandatory summer 100% tablefillers from Pif de Mestre and Luc de Mestre -- six demos, not as neatly paired as when I first thought to put them in a table like this:
| Level | Easy | Nightmare |
|---|---|---|
| terra4 | 1:40 | |
| polygon2 | 1:40 | 2:58 |
| trr | 1:18 | |
| earth | 1:28 | 1:42 |
They also recorded a couple of demos on that strangest of maps, p_se_xxx. Strange because it's easier to record a 100% than a run... They started out with the 2-Player Easy Run, squeaking home in 1:09, 11 seconds faster than the single player ER, but only 1 second faster than the EH (what!?). Then they relaxed into the Easy 100% category, beating R&R by a healthy six seconds to record 1:09 again.
The numerate will have noted that we have two two player demos left. These turn out to be Mathias Thore and Robert Maglic squeaking the long way rules on The Door To Chthon Nightmare Run in 0:24 and Mathias Thore (again) and Michael Hudson (not again) grappling through the r1m6 Easy Run in 1:07, just a couple of seconds faster than Robert Axelsson's single player time.
Right, what comes after two player demos? Three player demos, of course.
Well, we don't have any of them, but what would come after three player demos, if we had any? Four player demos! ID four player demos, even. Over a couple of idle but well connected days, the Coop '05 team of Mathias Thore, Robert Maglic, Paul Davies and Thomas Stubgaard attacked the first episode of quake to get:
What comes after four player demos? A five player demo? Surely not! We haven't had any of them since 2002! Ignoring this historical precedent, I joined the above bunch of reprobates to do the 5-Player Easy 100% of Gloom Keep in 0:21, beating an assortment of Swedes (and the still oven-hot four player demo) by 1 second.
With the coop time I've been putting in recently, you'd think I'd just acquired a broadband connection or something...
Monday, August 8th by Morfans
Oh Yes! It's The Results! - 2:40 PM
A big congratulations to our winners Robert Maglic, who boosted so fast that even the Devil Himself performing an INSANE trick couldn't catch him up, and Connor Fitzgerald, who is simply too good to be real.
An enormous thank-you to everyone who took the time to send us an entry. Given the huge response to this we will have another contest for you in the next couple of weeks. (Promise!)
Go to the contest page for a full list of results and the demo downloads. As a special treat for you all Mandel even made an .avi of all four winning entries! (See here, here, here and here if you don't believe me.)
[1] Okay, so that was just some random number I made up to add a touch of pseudo-science to the proceedings.
Monday, August 1st by Mandel
The one and only big WOW update - 2:08 PM
Remember me saying You will want to get this on the line above this? It was the truth and nothing else. There are so many very sweet demos this time, you can't even imagine. So instead of saying must download for every demo, I'm saying must download only once, here: must download. It's only 4 MB.
Jozsef Szalontai is known to most as an SDA oldtimer, JoeQuake coder, and QdQ producer. Many people also consider him king of quake, bunny and trick categories; a Hungarian bunny machine. And it's true. Jozsef sure has all it takes to improve an easy run on the Ebon Fortress, for example by one second. Look at this 0:39 demo to actually see him do it! This time it's not just a "Jozsef 2005" demo with no explanation of where the saved time comes from. It's a new, cool and difficult trick. And a great egg demo. WOW.
Even Connor Fitzgerald laughed at himself when he recently beat the long-standing 14:02 Selinus classic run through all of Quake. How could he be such a chicken and play the game on easy skill? Was it a mistake? Or only practice for greater things to come? Yes. To remedy the embarassment of the easy run, Connor pulled the console down, changed to the skill for true men (nightmare, 3), and recorded a run through All of Quake in 19:50, 4 minutes and 3 seconds faster than Will Marsh's previous record. Think about this time a little while. Remember the time of the original QdQ? It was 19:49... Nobody just goes and beats that in one go. Not even Connor! But still, it's "pretty" close. WOW.
That's it for singleplayer ID demos. And now for something a little bit different. Arturo García Lasca had a look at some of his own old demos and decided that they were just too crappy for today's standards. Therefore, he improved them!
Next up is Thomas Bergendorff. Receiving more than enough trout slaps from Thomas Stubgaard for not making enough demos was enough to make him quickly go make some. And WOW.
Some of the other teamSDAers have a habit of telling certain people they make too few demos. In other, unrelated news, here's a new demo from Robert Maglic. It's his first single player 100% demo, and it's a nightmare one! Fc is the map, and 1:34 is the time. That's two seconds faster than Fabian Kollakowski. Woah!
I also teamed up with Midas and did a coop demo or two:
A new coop team of genuine prude British manners presents itself with a r2m6 two-player easy run in 1:49. Michael Hudson and Richard Skidmore are the gentlemen behind it, and it's 18 seconds faster than Pif and Luc. I sure hope this coop team will find some time to do some more demos soon :)
Mattias Öman and Joakim Sarkkinen did a demo on cult, a two-player nightmare run in 0:16, one second faster than Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner.
This is the last demo, m'kay? In a short timespan between being busy and being busy, Thomas Stubgaard had the time to hook up with me and do the the Palace of Hate two-player nightmare 100% in 2:14, beating Richard Skidmore and Thomas Stubgaard by 47 seconds.
Wow! How about that? A bunch of quality ID demos, another bunch of fine demos on various maps, and some nice coops! Me like.
Remember the contest, people! Go HERE and run your little shorts off. Then, join us at #qdq and brag about your times. Less than one week to go before deadline. Seeya!
Friday, July 22nd by Morfans
Lazy, but that's how it goes... - 7:40 PM
Another fairly brisk week here, with demos coming in from ALL of your favourite runners. Obviously I'm assuming here that your favourite runners are the ones in the list below, otherwise you're in for a bit of a disappointment...
Starting off with everyone's favourite former big-mouthed git, Arturo Garcia Lasca, doing what he does frequently and best. That is to say, beating himself.
In deference to Mandel's wishes I will present the demos he did this week, some on his own, some with Midas, it the automatically generated, no human text style.
Hot-diggity-damn! That was so easy! Y'know, I think I'm going to do the same with Pif and Luc's coop demos. I don't mean this as any disrespect as these two are still showing signs of improvement every time a batch of demos arrive BUT I had a heavy night last night and a hectic day at work so by this time in the afternoon I'm afraid I just don't give a fucking fuck any more. Sorry about the swearing. Actually, no I'm not. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck. What's that you say? Young, impressionable people might be reading this? Well fuck 'em. And fuck you too! :-)
Here are the demos. Enjoy them.
Well, I could just end the update here, but that would be plain crazy. If I did I couldn't tell you about our new contest. Read about it HERE, strap yourself into your best running codpiece, grab your rocket launcher and go Boost Like A Man(slay)!
Have a good weekend.
Wednesday, July 13th by mwh
Summer's here! - 1:10 PM
It's hot here in northern Europe. Too hot to run around outside, certainly. Too hot to go to school, as well. Fortunately for us lot, it's not too hot to sit in front of a computer and waggle your pointing device around furiously, and this furious waggling has produced a veritable summer bounty of demos.
One place it's very clear that school is out is Chez de Mestre. Each by the now famous Pif et Luc team, and each a tablefiller, this week produced:
You think that's it for coops? Think again!
That must be it for coops, surely? No, apparently it's too hot to play WoW too, and here-again-gone-again-here-again-gone-again-here-again some-time SDA staffer Evan Wagner and his “special friend” Cameron Engles cooled down by blasting through the 2-Player Easy 100% of catacomb in 0:34.
Now that really is it for coops. I think.
Talking of here-again-gone-again-... we have some demos from the Caribbean for the first time in a while, with Arturo Garcia Lasca improving both his 100%s on tod by one second to 0:28 (easy) and, uh, 0:28 (nightmare). Skill settings? What are they for again, mappers?
Who is the man with too much talent but not enough single-player demos on SDA? Well, the stock answer to this used to be Mandel but he's fought this charge off some time ago, and to make sure he sent us:
No, the man with the erroneous talent : SP SDA demos ratio is of course Robert Maglic. Making things a little better, Midas got to the fc Nightmare Run before Mandel, beating Peter by the predictable 1 second to get 0:16.
There are more demos in the SDA mail box already and some of them are even not coops, but ... enough!
Saturday, July 2nd by Mandel
Coopwabunga - 7:08 PM
Summer surely is a fine season to sit on chairs made of wood and play Quake. Right? Right?? Of course. We've received what to me looks like 29 demos over a very short period of time! Most of them are coop demos.
But some aren't. Thomas Stubgaard is a fragile axeman from Denmark. You've probably seen the name before. He's the guy with all those id nightmare 100% records here on SDA. But nightmare 100% isn't Thomas's only skill here in life. He can also yodel, drink lemonade, and do id easy 100% records! The demo that has gotten a well deserved touch up this time is Chambers of Torment. New time is 2:05, and it's at least a couple of seconds faster than Daniel's old 2:08 demo. Dunno how many exactly but it's several.
Now, the recently added speedmaps. Pif de Mestre applied his arsenal on the monsters on sm56_czg, and managed to kill'em all on the worst difficulty in just 2:22 beating nobody's old record.
Paul Davies went berserk on sm57_czg and, much to his own surprise, ended up with a 1:51 nightmare 100% demo. It should come as a surprise for everybody that Paul is the first one ever to do a nightmare 100% on this level. This beats nobody's old record!
Another set of maps is the terra maps. You all know them. Mathias Thore, or as I like to call him, I, did the terra4 nightmare run in 0:16, one second faster than Kimmo. All thanks to some monster infighting.
Which smoothly brings us over to coop's corner. Coop demos on terra4 have been arriving like crazy this weekend: